Articles by Katherine Noyes

The European Commission on Thursday stepped up the antitrust penalties Microsoft could have to pay to a whopping US$4 million a day for what the Commission says are unreasonable pricing practices In a statement of objections sent to Microsoft, the commission said the company had failed to comply with its obligations resulting from the commission's ...

The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) Wednesday stepped up its efforts to wipe out illegal music sharing on college campuses The group, which represents the music recording industry, announced that it has sent out 400 "pre-litigation" letters to 13 American universities, informing them that a copyright infringement lawsuit is imminen...

Sony fired the latest salvo in the ongoing high-definition format war Monday when it announced that it will release its second Blu-ray Disc player for about US$400 less than its current one Priced at about $600, the new BDP-S300 model will sport a new design, advanced audio codecs, Bravia Theater Sync and CD playback. It will be capable of outputti...

Google on Monday confirmed that it has signed on several new, big-name partners in its program to distribute video content along with advertising over its AdSense online network Included among the new partners are theNational Basketball Association (NBA); CondeNet'sEpicurious.com andStyle.com;The Wall Street Journal Online; andLX.tv....

With the release of Google Apps Premier Edition, there's little doubt that Google has its sights set squarely on Microsoft and the market for office software. Add in the fact that marquee names are on board, including Procter & Gamble for the new software suite, and there's clearly at least some degree of threat behind that challenge What remains t...

Space enthusiasts, take note: Your chance to travel by rocket may be closer than you think. NASA and Virgin Galactic on Tuesday agreed to explore collaborations aimed at making commercial space travel a widespread reality NASA's Ames Research Center in California's Silicon Valley and Virgin Galactic, a subsidiary of Richard Branson's Virgin Group, ...

The latest reports from the front lines in the video game console wars show that Nintendo's Wii was the U.S. market leader in January, according to new market research data Sales figures for Wii were 436,000 units that month in the United States, compared with 294,000 units for Microsoft's Xbox 360 and 244,000 units for Sony's PlayStation 3, the NP...

Following a beta-test process involving half a million photographers, Adobe Systems on Monday released Photoshop Lightroom 1.0 Aimed primarily at professional photographers, Photoshop Lightroom is a software tool that allows users to import, manage and present large volumes of digital photographs. Using Adobe Camera Raw technology, it supports more...

In a landmark vote Tuesday, the Kansas State Board of Education once again adopted science standards regarding instruction in evolution The new guidelines reflect an overturn of previous standards, written in part by advocates of "intelligent design," that earned Kansas international ridicule in 2005. Advocates of intelligent design believe that li...

Following Wednesday's announcement of the formation of the Open Solutions Alliance (OSA) by a group of 10 vendors, Unisys said it would join the nonprofit consortium The OSA, which was announced at the LinuxWorld OpenSolutions Summit in New York, is dedicated to promoting comprehensive open source business solutions. In joining, Unisys becomes the ...

The FBI loses between three and four of its laptop computers every month, as well as the same number of weapons, according to a recent report by the Department of Justice's Inspector General Over the last 44 months, 160 FBI laptops were reported lost or stolen -- some containing potentially sensitive information -- along with 160 weapons....

Against the backdrop of the 3GSM World Congress wireless trade show in Barcelona, Spain, Research In Motion on Monday unveiled the latest in its BlackBerry line of e-mail phone devices The BlackBerry 8800 smartphone is the slimmest BlackBerry yet, and comes equipped with a variety of consumer-style features familiar to many from the BlackBerry Pear...

Computers can now be trained better than ever before to be able to predict what a human being plans to do, according to a new study published Thursday Using a combination of technologies including pattern recognition software and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), the authors of the study investigated whether a computer could predict ahe...

In response to Tuesday's open letter from Apple CEO Steve Jobs calling for major record labels to stop requiring digital rights management (DRM) technology on music sold online, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) is now calling on Apple to license the antipiracy technology it uses to protect music it sells online Currently, music ...

Parents, beware: Your video gaming kids may now have a new argument to justify the hours they spend playing. A new study from the University of Rochester has found that playing high-action video games can actually be good for your vision The study, which was funded by the National Institutes of Health and will appear in the upcoming issue of Psycho...

As part of Safer Internet Day, which is being celebrated Tuesday in 40 countries around the world, a group of more than a dozen European mobile phone companies joined together in Brussels, Belgium, to sign an agreement to help make mobile phones safer for children By signing the European Framework on Safer Mobile Use by Younger Teenagers and Childr...

Microsoft's self-proclaimed commitment to open standards became more tangible Thursday when it released the first Open XML translator for Word Version 1.0 of the translator, which is a free, downloadable add-on to the word processor, allows users to convert Office Open XML (OOXML) documents into the OpenDocument Format (ODF) standard, and vice vers...

The Microsoft executive who led the company's Zune product launch, among other things, is retiring from the company, officials announced Wednesday Bryan Lee, corporate vice president of Microsoft's entertainment business, plans to leave the company in the next several weeks to pursue personal interests. Taking his place at the helm of the Zune musi...

Sony's profits are down, while Nintendo's sales are way up. The Wii video game console is selling faster than Nintendo can keep up with. Following Sony's announcement of its disappointing results Tuesday, which it partly blamed on huge costs for the PS3 launch, speculation is running rampant about the PlayStation 3's position in the video gaming market...

A problem that arose in NASA's Hubble Space Telescope over the weekend means that many of the orbiting telescope's key capabilities may be permanently lost, officials announced Monday The observatory entered protective "safe mode" on Saturday as a result of a power malfunction in its Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS), the primary instrument aboard ...